Follow me on Twitter

Friday, October 30, 2009

President Pratibha Patil is in London to receive a baton from Queen Elizabeth II on October 29. She has already received a tasteless joke from the duke of Windsor about Patels . And then the President is all ready to get the dubious distinction of the first-ever head of state of a Commonwealth country to receive the baton from the Queen Elizabeth. It’s a ‘baton’ that’s customarily given to the host country of the Commonwealth Games. The Commonwealth has 53 member states including Nauru, .. etc and none of them ever thought it prudent to be so obsessed with the colonial hangover that their head of the state would go and be a durbari in the former coloniser’s palace.

And our sportsmen like Kapil Dev gave a statement expressing a feel of pride for having found their names in the invite list to be in the queue and get introduced to a lady who hardly knows about their land except that her predecessors once ruled them with a barbarity that is reminiscent of the dark ages (her knowledge about us won’t be better than that of the duke of fatigue and follies who slipped over the Patels) and she never expressed any regret or remorse over what the British did to us.

Any surprises on the Indian spinelessness?

We are a nation that produced a large number of rai bahadurs and sirs and rao sahebs while ‘crazy deewane’ were becoming Bhagat Singhs and Rajgurus and Sukhdevs. There were a large section of our Indians who thought it prudent to keep a silence on Jalianwala Bagh, honour the butcher Dyer even after the gruesome incident. It’s another matter that we had those Casablancas too who preferred gallows to knighthood.

Pratibha Patil and Kapil Devs have joined the ranks of those who have no sense of history, leave aside a sense of pride in the sacrifices of revolutionaries who fought the British. We are the world’s greatest living democracy, much larger and with a better civilisational background and track record of humanity than the British. Why should a head of a democracy present herself before a queen, a symbol of a decaying, old tradition, which has lost all relevance to the contemporary values of civil society? Shouldn’t they be raising questions that why the lady occupying Buckingham Palace must remain the head of the Commonwealth? The most logical and contextually correct thing would be to have a head of a democratic sovereign as its chief and not a titular icon of a royalty that stinks with the blood of our revolutionaries and whose wealth is built on the loot of India?

Pratibha Patil hasn’t found time to visit Hussainiwala , the memorial to Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. Or the Jalianwala Bagh. London seems to be more inviting to her. What a shame that India should send a large contingent of sportsmen along with her.

The first question that has to raised before the lethargic neo-rai sahebs is the logic of still clinging to the Commonwealth comity? What great achievement we envisage by spending more than $1.6 billion on organizing the Commonwealth Games, which were originally conceptualized to keep the British colonial legacy alive and still require the queen to distribute largesse and announce the beginning of the games as its head. Since its inception in the new garb in1952, there has not been anyone else except the queen to head the games and it’s incumbent upon the members, all former subjects of the empire, all who had been slaves of the queen, to go to London and receive the ‘baton’ from Her Majesty so that the games are launched formally.

Here are some gems of information taken from the official website of the games.

The Queen's Baton Relay

The Relay traditionally begins at Buckingham Palace in London as a part of the city's Commonwealth Day festivities. Her Majesty the Queen entrusts the baton to the first relay runner. At the Opening Ceremony of the Games, the final relay runner hands the baton back to her Majesty the Queen .

History

The Relay was introduced at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, Wales. Through the 1994 Games, the Relay only went through England and the host nation.

The history of The Games

In 1911, the 'Festival of Empire’ was held in London to celebrate the coronation of King George V. As part of the festival, an Inter-Empire Championships was held in which teams from Australia, Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom competed in events such as boxing, wrestling, swimming and athletics.

From 1930 to 1950 the Games were known as the British Empire Games, then the British Empire and Commonwealth Games until 1962. From 1966 to 1974 they took on the title of British Commonwealth Games and from 1978 onwards they have been known as simply the Commonwealth Games. The Commonwealth Youth Games are also known as Friendly Games in the English speaking provinces of the Commonwealth.

In the baton relay, after the president receives the baton from the Queen, the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) chairman Suresh Kalamdi, and Olympic gold medallist and ace shooter Abhinav Bindra will then start the Queen’s Baton Relay,

The Queen's Baton relay is one of the oldest traditions of Commonwealth Games since it was first done in the 1958 Games in Wales

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 1994

The Baton was fashioned from sterling silver and was engraved with traditional symbols of the creative artists' families and cultures, including a wolf, a raven and an eagle with a frog in its mouth.

Kuala Lumpur, 1998

Malaysia placed their own flavour on the Games, with the Queen’s Baton being carried into the stadium on an elephant. The baton was presented to Prince Edward by Malaysia’s first ever Commonwealth medal winner Koh Eng Tong, a gold medallist in weightlifting in 1950.

Manchester, 2002

The baton has special significance as it marks the Golden Jubilee of Her Majesty The Queen and was designed to symbolise the uniqueness of the individual and the common rhythm of humanity.

Opening ceremony traditions

• From 1930 through 1950, the parade of nations was led by a single flag bearer carrying the Union Flag, symbolising Britain's leading role in the British Empire.

• Since 1958, there has been a relay of athletes carrying a baton from Buckingham Palace to the Opening Ceremony. This baton has within it the Queen's Message of Greeting to the athletes.

• All other nations march in English alphabetical order.

• The military is more active in the Opening Ceremony than in the Olympic Games. This is to honour the British Military traditions of the Old Empire.

So we have a queen and her representatives to be honoured who hardly get a serious glance in their own country except when a scandal brings them to the front page of a tabloid, we have to follow the English, and run with a baton which has symbols we do not know why-“a wolf, a raven and an eagle with a frog in its mouth.” And then we have to honour the “British Military traditions of the Old Empire.” Because they killed our patriots? Someone must file an application under RTI to know how many millions have been allocated just to finalise the theme and the tamasha to start a function that would be a joke to the sacred memories of our freedom fighters.

Why can’t we spend half the money we are spending on the Commonwealth Games for training and building better and permanent facilities to identify indigenous sports talent and prepare them for the next Olympics? Why can’t we have a commonwealth of the proud, patriotic sovereign countries which would make sure that they do everything in line with the honour and pride of their language, customs, traditions and salute their patriots taking the baton from a freedom fighter who had fought the savagery of the British empire rather than go to London and bow before the British queen?

The release function was graced by the distinguished panelists - Shri Shekhar Gupta, Editor in Chief, The Indian Express Group of Newspapers, Shri Sanjay Gupta, Chief Editor, Jagran Group of Newspapers and Shri Rajesh Kalra, Chief Editor, The Times of India Internet.

Shri Mohan Bhagwat ji, Param Pujya Sarsanghchalak of the RSS said in his inspiring speech that this book provides an insight into our world view. Tarun Vijay writes with his heart poured into his columns and with his sharp inttelect and facts he provides the real picture of the dangers India is facing.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Hon’ble Sarsanghchalak (Chief) of the RSS Shri Mohan Rao Bhagwat has kindly consented to release it on Wednesday, 28th October 2009, at the Parliament House’s Balyogi Auditorium.

The release function shall be presided over by the icon of the Indian advancement in science Dr. K.Kasturirangan, hon’ble member, Planning Commission and former Chief, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization). Distinguished panelists are Shri Shekhar Gupta, Editor in Chief, The Indian Express Group of Newspapers, Shri Sanjay Gupta, Chief Editor, Jagran Group of Newspapers and Shri Rajesh Kalra, Chief Editor, The Times of India Internet.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

The famous hotel Dusit Thani Hua Hin overlooking the gulf of Thailand, where the leaders of India and China met, proudly proclaims, "We use gifts of the heavens to create heaven on earth." It is one of Thailand's most scintillating hubs, known for its calm and serene surroundings. I don’t know if the leaders noticed it, but they surely were there to create a better atmosphere between the two nuclear-powered nations which fought a bitter war forty-seven years ago and have been under the shadow of a cold war once again.

The meeting between Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Wen Jiabao must help calm the harshness in both the capitals. Prudence and pragmatism prevailed and the outcome was placidly correct. Just correct. Neither yielded the position he has stuck to and neither raised the decibel levels. You couldn’t have expected a tit-for-tat show there and while being conscious of the present situation, if both sides can reconcile themselves to building bridges while sorting out difference, neither loses.

Of late, the Chinese have been pricking Indian sensitivities at an extraordinarily fast pace. So much so that even the electioneering scenes in India were overpowered by the news regarding Chinese incursions, Indian rebuffs, major cover stories in media and the Arunachal CM meeting the Prime Minister.

Interestingly, in such a charged background our cool and gentle Manmohan Singh met Wen Jiabao and felt "excited" as the news reports say. I am sure this must be a reporter’s overenthusiasm, as he might have wanted to convey the thrill of the meeting. The reports said, "Manmohan Singh told Wen: 'I am excited to see you.' He said the Chinese people have had a number of achievements "and we share their sense of accomplishment". He said this in the context of the 60th anniversary of the founding of modern China."

The Chinese premier was more candid. He said, "We want to have a healthy and steady relationship with India. I hope we can use this opportunity to exchange our views on all related issues."

As any student of Chinese affairs can tell, understanding diplomacy in Mandarin is a tricky job. Each word and the length of the sentence and similes used to convey the message have to be studied carefully. The official "leaks" do not tell us whether the Indian side conveyed any displeasure or annoyance to the Chinese premier on their cold-war like interventions and the Chinese side, it appears, was calmly "just diplomatically right". It means they think what they have been doing so far is right and demands no explanation or relook.

This must worry us.

The raking up of the border issue so forcefully, in spite of an agreement that the issue will be resolved amicably and through dialogue, has surprised many. While the pro-China lobby in Delhi blamed the American influence for creating an atmosphere that would make the Indian people ask for a reprisal, the factual position about Chinese arrogance spoke a different story. The situation on the Chinese side has to be understood before any final "assault". The Chinese have grown rich, assertive and xenophobic in their global dreams. And this must make them more interventionist in near future.

It began with the Chinese incursions – observers say there had been more than 218 incursions by the Chinese security personnel since January this year. And the number of such incursions was higher in the Ladakh sector, where they have been successful to also make India dismantle a bridge on the Indus. The experts from Ladakh have been complaining that the Chinese have been intruding the Indian territory, they are not taking our land by inches but by yards. These experts also tells us the points and the nullahs where the Chinese came and then established their dominance. Yet nobody from the South Block took it seriously. Even the Army chief, Gen Deepak Kapoor, and our foreign minister, S M Krishna, gave contradictory statements about incursions. Still the Chinese belligerence didn’t stop. China objected to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Arunachal visit, it began construction work in the Kashmir region which is under illegal occupation of Pakistan, in spite of having conceded by the Indian government that Tibet is a part of China (which the nationalist school of thought will never accept), China keeps showing Kashmir as an independent country and Sikkim has yet to be shown as an Indian state. It also began giving visas to Kashmiris separately and hasn’t quite understood about the terrorist problem India is facing though it would like us to understand its jihadi headache in Xinjiang.

China opposed India’s agreement with the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), it tried to block Asian Development Bank’s $60 million loan for a power generation project in Arunachal, and more recently it tried its hardest to coerce Southeast Asian nations against inviting India as a member of the East Asia summit. It has not only accepted a "gift" of land from Pakistan, which in fact is claimed by India, but has been strengthening Pakistan militarily by providing nuclear knowhow, among other things. On the maritime front, China is steadfastly modernizing its bases in the Indian Ocean with its port development projects going in full swing in Pakistan, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

India expressed its concern over China’s new underground nuclear submarine base off the southern tropical island of Hainan. The then Naval chief, Sureesh Mehta, had publicly stated that the base poses a threat to Indian security. On the Arunachal border China has been shifting border pillars and making a dam on the Brahmaputra that would be a potential threat to the Indian people. On the Sikkim border a new highway and permanent army structures have come up. In times of any hostility, the Chinese would be able to cut the Siliguri corridor swiftly. On the other side, a joint command of Lanzhou Military Region opposite Ladakh, Himachal and Uttarakhand has come up. Tibet has become the most powerful Chinese base against India and reports say that China is in a position to send 20,000 troops anywhere on the Indian border from its Tibetan bases within two hours.

By contrast, Indian politicians have no idea what should be their Chinese policy and are busy in petty domestic rumblings or totally uninformed cacophonies. Once Arunachal used to have 12c functional air strips, now it has only two and more accurately just one, to cite an example of our preparedness. It's only after the media taking up the Chinese threat that India responded by positioning its Sukhoi war planes replacing MIGs on the northeastern front and deciding to revive its four IAF bases on the Arunachal border (Vijaya Nagar, Mechuka, Tuting and Passighat), yet the confidence level hasn’t risen high on our side.

But it would be wrong to conclude that China would engage India in any military assault soon. It would also be imprudent and pathetically unintelligent to put China in the Pakistan category. It has to be a different story – we are not "1962" and China is not Maoist either. Keeping a watch on the factual positions, building our own defence and economy, we must continue to engae China in bilateral relations.

China is already almost our biggest trade partners; in 2010 bilateral trade would be $75 billion and in 2015 it will reach about $225 billion. China is waiting to become a super power by 2030. It's not in a hurry to settle the border issue with us but at the same time it will not let India and the world community forget about its claims on Indian territory. It opposed the NEFA contingent in Asiad games in 1982, it also opposed creation of Arunachal in 1986 and it rakes up such contentious issues whenever there is any high level Indian visit to China or a big event takes place here. While India-China trade and cultural relations are given a high fillip, simultaneously the irritants are also propped up. On the Tibet issue, it’s unsparingly rude and tough. During the Beijing Olympics, when Tibetans in Delhi demonstrated before the Chinese embassy and went a bit out of control, the Chinese foreign ministry called our envoy to Beijing, Nirupama Rao (now our foreign secretary) at 2 am (see my column The two a.m. call).

So far India and its patriotic South Block officers have been resisting and giving civilized firm responses to the Chinese belligerence. Allowing the Dalai Lama to visit Tawang and Nirupama Rao’s no-nonsense statement on Arunachal being an undisputed Indian state show it. But the war is not just about Twang or a Dalai Lama’s activities. The real zone of contention involves the emergence of the US in the region as a superior power and India’s unstoppable march ahead with a thriving democracy that may lead it to be a more acceptable world power. Certainly India will have to gear up for a bigger role and control the region independently with deft handling of the AfPak imbroglio and keeping its economy and defence options in good shape while keeping China meaningfully engaged. Can we expect this from the present crop of decision makers?

Sunday, October 18, 2009

He wanted to be faithful to his beloved from Srinagar, who was beautiful and had unflinching trust in her life partner. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to have love bloom between Jammu and Srinagar. But it was more than that. The boy from Jammu was a Hindu and the girl from Srinagar, a Muslim. Ameena was her name and she changed her name to Anchal Sharma after marriage.

Rajneesh was a small trader from Jammu often going on business trips to Srinagar. He fell in love with a girl and married her.

A month after the marriage the boy was picked up from his Jammu house by the Kashmir police and taken to Srinagar for "investigation". The police never registered his name, Rajneesh Sharma, as the accused who is being taken to Srinagar, but instead named his brother Pawan Sharma in police records, to confuse and hide the real identity.

The smell of a plot was there the moment they took the boy hustled in a jeep and covered with a blanket.

The boy never returned home to celebrate his first Diwali with Anchal nee Ameena.

He was found dead hanging with an iron grill in his Srinagar cell. Police said he committed "suicide". An inconsolable Anchal alleged that her parents bribed police to murder her beloved because he dared to marry a Muslim girl from the valley. Anchal’s father works in Srinagar’s police department, hence the influence was obvious.

This week Anchal would have been celebrating Diwali with her husband Rajneesh but for if this ultimate Taliban act. Surprisingly the incident, so brutal and tragic hasn’t found an echo in the elite human-rightist circles of Delhi and the self-righteous media which had taken up the Rizwan case of Kolkata at a greater war footing than it has shown regarding Chinese incursions.

Rajneesh's "murder" in a police post in Srinagar wouldn’t have occurred if Rajneesh was a "Rizwan" and the girl had remained an Ameena.

The writerati, who declare love’s supremacy whenever the boy is someone else and the girl is a Hindu (the final test one has to pass to be declared secular in this land of self-flagellation) are maintaining a studied silence. None has spoken so far. None has tried to invoke the wrath of the Women’s Commission, none has bothered to take a delegation of women to Jammu in the name of secularism and its prophets. And none has found it a deserving case for a heated debate on the sparkling channels discussing who should win — love or the colour of your faith?

Why?

Because the girl was a Muslim turned Hindu and the boy, unfortunately happened to be Hindu. Because the culprit in this case is Srinagar, the reservoir of all that is sacred in secular pantheon and the boy belongs to the Hindu Jammu and hence anything that would demand a condemnation of the Taliban in Srinagar must be held back and forgotten?

The girl, Anchal nee Ameena, said sobbingly in Jammu that the Srinagar police tortured her husband just for his crime of marrying a Muslim girl. The mother of the girl knew about the affair but insisted the boy convert to Islam, which Rajneesh refused. Anchal says Rajneesh was tortured in the police custody putting pressure on him to convert and when he refused consistently, he was murdered. The Jammu papers have reported quoting the postmortem report that police tortured the boy in custody, broke his legs, crushed his knee, gave him electric shocks and peeled his nails before declaring his "suicide". In cold blood.

In Srinagar. In a police post. He was married on August 21, "picked up" without an arrest warrant on September 29 and was found dead in police custody on October 4. Though a magisterial inquiry was ordered, no FIR was lodged till yesterday, that is, October 14, when a chief judicial magistrate in Jammu ordered an inquiry against 11 accused persons in Srinagar.

The Buddhists of Ladakh and the Hindus of Jammu have been complaining for long that Srinagar has become an alien land for them. It discriminates against them on the basis of religion. The Amarnath Shrine agitation is a recent pointer to what Srinagar does to its minorities. The forced exile of half a million Hindus from the valley is another example of the attitude that the only Muslim-majority state of India has exhibited towards non-Muslims. For a detailed factsheet regarding Srinagar’s blatant communal bias against Jammu, please see my column.

A couple of years before, the Buddhist Association of Ladakh gave a memorandum to the central government. A part of it said:

1. During 1992-99, 24 Buddhist girls from Leh district were converted to Islam and a majority of them were taken to Kargil and Srinagar.

2. Twelve villages with hamlets of Buddhists, comprising 651 families (numbering approximately 5,000) located at 40km to 60km from Kargil town were targeted for conversions. Till 2002, 72 boys and girls were converted to Islam, according to the survey conducted by the Ladakh Buddhist Association.

3. Muslims of Kargil are not allowing the LBA to repair and reconstruct a 40-year-old Gompa comprising three rooms and lying in a shambles.

4. Cremation of dead Buddhists is not allowed at Kargil and the body has to be moved at a remote Buddhist area.

5. No Buddhist sarai is allowed to be constructed at Kargil though there has been a demand for the last 35 years.

6. Kargil has 20% Buddhist population. Yet (a) only one Buddhist was appointed patwari out of 24 patwaris, the rest were all Muslims. (b) In 1998, 40 employees for Class IV were appointed in the education department; out of these only one was Buddhist, that too after his conversion to Islam.

Similar complaints, with proven statistics were given regarding discrimination against Buddhists in the area of Kashmir Administrative Services (KAS), admission to medical and engineering colleges and allocation of development funds received from the central government.

That’s Srinagar.

So who is going to help Anchal? She seems to be a courageous beloved of her "slain" husband and has been facing media crews with grit. She has refused an ex gratia grant by the state government and has demanded a CBI inquiry. The state leaders, who made a beeline to Shopian, have not bothered to say even a word of sympathy, leave aside visiting her.

The brutal killings and beheading of security personnel and common citizens in Jharkhand and Maharashtra must make all Indians stand up in unison to defeat the Maoists. We must shun all our differences on such occasions. Home minister P Chidambaram must get full support in his war on the Maoists. Those who know and have been interacting with him can vouch he is willing to do another Siddhartha Shankar Ray in spite of a strong pro-Naxalite lobby in Delhi. He snubbed them on one occasion and in clear words termed Maoists as ‘cold blooded murderers’. Indians, performing their duties and living as law abiding citizens can’t be allowed to be beheaded by the beastly gun wielders who say they are secular revolutionaries. Till June this year, according to home ministry sources, 1,127 incidents of Maoist violence occurred in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andhra, Maharashtra, Orissa and Bihar. In these, 457 citizens were killed including a two-year-old. Two hundred of those killed were security personnel and 27 special police officers, the common citizens who offer their services to help the security network. Many were killed after being declared ‘police informers’. The Maoists have destroyed 172 schools, hospitals, roads, railway stations, police posts and similar public property in the above-mentioned period. In the last 10 years the figure of the killings by the Maoists has crossed five thousand. Their sources of funds and ammunition lie in the territories of India’s sworn enemies and their boys get training in jungle warfare too by the intelligence agencies of the neighbouring countries. So, those who act to destroy our social fabric and create insurgents, those who are our enemies are their friends.

See some of the news reports about their ‘acts of bravery’: (a) Last year hundreds of them took over a town in Bihar and freed nearly 400 inmates from a jail, including many supporters, (b)This year they stole 19 tonnes of explosives from a state mining operation in Chhattisgarh, and killed more than 50 people by setting off a landmine under a truck in February, (c) The home ministry says nearly 1,000 people died in Maoist-violence last year, while a senior police officer told Reuters there were more than 20,000 armed rebels backed by hundreds of thousands of supporters, and (d) According to villagers, (in Bihar) the victims were killed after they defied Maoists and refused to hand over their land to them."They claim our land to be theirs and the incident took place at the disputed land site. They came at midnight. They caught all he people and shot at their heads from a close range," said Jawahar Singh, a villager.

Still in Delhi, one may find a number of so-called intellectuals of the secular variety trying to raise support and a respectable space for them. They base their sympathies for the Maoists on two counts: they are working for the emancipation of the poor and the downtrodden, people who are voiceless against the repression of the state apparatus, and secondly their motive is secular, they want development for people's progress and an equitable distribution of resources which the corrupt state machinery and political system doesn’t provide. Hence their fight is for the higher motives of public good, so state power must try to understand them and provide good infrastructure in the areas they are ‘active’. That alone will help people to appreciate the noble virtues of the government and they will stop helping the Maoists.

Nothing can be farther from the truth than these manufactured premises. It’s a sham apology for the murderous exploiters of the poor and downtrodden. They work in unison with the country’s enemies and hence are nothing but traitors and antinational insurgents. Nobody has any sympathy for the corrupt and lethargic policemen, politicians nor would any sane person support the lackadaisical speed of development and lack of infrastructure in the poorer, distanced pockets of rural India where the Naxalites thrive. The rich get richer and the poor get the election dates. Hospitals, schools, roads, an administration that delivers has remained a dream, still we are marching ahead and the resilience and individual brilliance of an Indian is making the nation move ahead. A lot remains to be done but is the beheading the only acceptable method to achieve that and to cleanse the system? Then how many heads must roll before the final heaven of the proletariat revolution materialises? It’s also false that the Maoists enjoy public support. Most of their cadres are drawn at gunpoint or compelled to join their ranks through threat. If the Maoists are so confident of massive public support why don’t they contest elections and make the ugly, corrupt politicians leave the space for the Red angels?

The security personnel may be as good or bad as are the pen-pushers of Delhi and Kolkata who provide intellectual shields to the murderers of Red Land. Francis, who was beheaded in Jharkhand or any other person in uniform, is also a victim of a rusted system. Policemen are ill equipped, poorly paid, asked to do difficult duty hours, and yet not given the respect they deserve. They come from lower or middle income group families, the men in white, the netajis, put tremendous pressure on them for political purposes, at the end they are held responsible for any mistake or failing to contain the lawbreakers while the politicians enjoy dinners with them in circuit houses as we saw in the last Lok Sabha elections when the same Maoist leaders were entertained by Congress leaders to ensure electoral victory in their areas of ‘influence’ in Andhra. The men in khaki are expected to protect the citizen. It’s a tall order for which they are never trained. The police and security set-up in India remains prisoner to a colonial vision. Prakash Singh, the renowned police officer, took up the issue and got orders from the Supreme Court too, but no state has shown any interest in implementing the orders. None in India has shown that he has a stake in reforming the police set up because the corrupt and rusted machinery serves vested interests. Reforming and making the men in khaki enjoy a certain degree of autonomy, better arms and modern training in guerrilla warfare and of course better salaries is on nobody’s agenda.

One has to have an intense hate and a ruthless violent mind to behead a person or to kill children.

Ruldu Ram (not the real name but the story is true), a tribal student from Chhattisgarh is the youngest child in his family. He has a younger brother and a sister. His father was a farmer, having a small piece of land in the remote part of Dantewara. For him the life remained a constant struggle, agriculture was not enough to provide for the family needs and he had to go for labour work, quite often. Still he was getting notices of demand from the local Maoist outfits: pay a thousand, or sometimes five thousand or part with your land. He was afraid but couldn’t do anything. Neither could he inform the police. The men in khaki were as unreliable. The news would soon reach the Naxalites and they would have him killed on charges of being a police informer. One day the Maoists, six of them, came to his house to demand money. He was simply unable to pay. His children and wife were all seeing him begging for his life. The Naxalites wanted money or instead asked him to join their ranks. They get new recruits like this, at the gun point. The father showed them his children and wife. Who will look after them if he goes to the jungle to take up guns for the red revolutionaries about whom he knew nothing? No idea why they are fighting, for whom and to serve what purpose. Angry Naxalite warriors beheaded him before the eyes of wailing children and a helpless wife.

This year, when the brother of Ruldu Ram’s slain father too refused Maoist’s demands, he was beheaded in his house.

Ruldu Ram is with us, a few friends who are helping children like him pursue studies and maybe he would become a police officer. His mother, with blank eyes, works in her village, often as a labourer and tries to ensure food and some education for Ruldu’s brother and sister. She has only one dream: to see children grow up and get married. She doesn’t know that her husband was slain for the cause of ‘the poor, downtrodden and proletariat’. Those who killed were ‘revolutionaries' working to bring about a ‘change in the statecraft, which is anti-people, anti-development and anti everything that their philosophy, Maoism, another name for the Communism as was practiced by Stalin and Mao’, approves of. She is ignorant. She didn't read Das capital.

There are more than 5,000 such stories. Stories of poor, ignorant, farmers and labourers, teachers and students, infants and school-going children. All of them were killed for a ‘revolution’. To bring about a change. They were either labeled police informers or were killed because they wore uniform. They were agents of the state. Hence deserved to be murdered.

And then these, the revolutionaries who killed small and petty farmers and villagers and recruited new members not through convincing them about the greatness of their ideology, but at gunpoint,’ join us or get killed’ had a number of influential dreamy eyed drawing room chocolate cheeked supporters who would discuss the poor at International addas of passionate debates and say how Naxalsim is directly connected to the lack of development and increasing corruption and anti-people policies of the government. They would say the gun wielders are not criminals, they have a dream for the emancipation of the common people, they want to serve the poor and the downtrodden and the farmers and the women.

Those providing a shield to the Maoist murderers should also be held as much responsible for the killings as are the Maoists.

Chidambaram has rightly refused to get into this ‘tackle Naxalism-Maoism through development' trap. In a civil society, development, democracy and a strong sense of respecting pluralism can have no place for violence. We are suffering too much from the bloodshed of our own people — Islamic jihad is on one side and on the other side has emerged the threat of Maoism. Both are two faces of the same coin. Both must be dealt with an iron hand. Hence, Chidambaram needs India’s support crossing all barriers of parties and ideologies.

At the very outset I would like to lodge a strong protest against the display of the pictures and videos of the three unfortunate ladies who were victims of their so-called protector for seven years. I wouldn’t mind if the husband’s pictures were displayed but why show the deeply pained ladies? That’s like putting their agony on public display.

Insensitive and unbecoming of the Mumbai media which had otherwise shown great restraint on many other unhappy occasions. Sometimes words are more powerful than pictures and if the journalists find it hard to express the agony of people like of these three through the power of the words, they should rather join Mumbai Municipal Corporation than advertise visuals of helpless people subjected to indescribable torture. The man, (really?) must be given an exemplary punishment and I am sure Mumbai has a heart that will take care of the traumatized three and find a way to rehabilitate them.

Now I must come to the principal theme of this piece. It’s something about an extraordinary happening in the region of the Mother, the Shakti, in Jammu, at another end of India’s tricoloured territory. There we found a tale of great courage in Rukhsana as a daughter of Mother India. The dreaded terrorists of Lashkar-e-Taiba came to her house and accused the family of acting as Indian informers. The ‘punishment’ for that, according to their kangaroo psyche would be death. Her story, she created it at the age of 21, is perfect material for our school curriculums and a sensible movie http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videoshow/5071663.cms).

Are we exaggerating her act of heroism? It's true that in such circumstances everyone must be so brave and courageous and hence why should we go to town with her action as something extraordinary? After all, she was supposed to do what she did as an Indian citizen? Right, we shouldn't 'overdo' but we should also not 'underrate' either!

If she is just another story of rural bravado, shouldn't the same yardstick be applied to those whom we decorate with Bharat Ratna, Padma awards or Param Vir Chakras? In times of treason and terror and traumatization of a society, her act stands in a different category and hence the appreciation too must match her scale of bravery.

She, as news reports say, now fears for her life and also for the lives of her family members. It will be a defeat for the Indian state if she is attacked or any terrorist finds it easy to take revenge on her family. She represents the battle of India against the antinational traitors and has justifiably become a hero in our eyes. Her region comprises of the worst terror-affected places like Kishtwar, Bhadrawah, Doda and Rajouri. These are a difficult hilly terrain,with hardly any road and communication facilities. I had been to these areas after the dreaded Doda masscre of the Hindus and found state apparatus unwilling to reinforce confidence amongst Hindus and Muslims against terror groups.

Terrorists have been trying to create a wedge between Hindus and Muslims with help from seperatist politicians of the valley. Though the statistics of the terror-struck families show Muslims being killed by Islamic terrorists in big numbers. The jihad which began essentially as a war against Hindus has started annihilating its own like we see in Pakistan. A state that was created for Muslims has been seeing barbaric treatment to Muslims in the name of an Islamism nobody understands. Stoning of women, preventing them from getting higher education, and declaring Ahemadias and Qaudianis as non-Muslims are a few instances, apart from an intense and violent hatred between Shias and Sunnis.

In this scenario Ruksana stands as a small but significant victory post of the Indian state’s pluralism and egalitarian firmness. She is a statement of Indianism that exhibits patriotism with pride. Islamist terrorists have been raping, killing and mutilating faces of Muslim women in J&K but none of the so-called advocates of the Muslim cause have ever taken up their cases for the fear of the terrorists’ guns. Parallel to the Shopian incident in Kashmir, in a horrifying incident two women were summarily executed by LeT terrorists. It drew absolutely no protest or even an appropriate mention in the Kashmiri press.

Praveen Swami wrote in one of his scintillating articles (June 2009), “Early this month, Nigeena Awan was dragged out of her home at Kellar, Kashmir, beaten up and executed with an assault weapon from point-blank range. Her father, Mohammad Sharif Awan, was ordered to bury his daughter without ceremony; the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, which carried out the execution, also warned neighbours against dignifying her death with last rites. But violent death has visited the Shopian area often, for the most part without drawing comment. In April, 60-year-old Reshma Awan, like Nigeena Awan a member of the Gujjar pastoralist community, was executed by the Lashkar-e-Taiba at Pahlipora. Her son, Mohammad Aslam Awan, was shot and seriously injured while attempting to protect her. Last month, Dachnoo resident Mohammad Saifuddin was killed similarly. And a day after Nigeena Awan was murdered, unidentified men shot dead shopkeeper Mohammad Abdullah Gela at his Sangarwani home.”

In many such incidents victims are Muslims but the secular state and the leaders find it easier to raise their voices, often on half-baked facts or complete falsehood against the army and other security personnel and keep a mummified silence on the atrocities of the Islamic terrorists. Hardly a single Muslim leader from the valley orfrom Delhi 's secular polity has raised any voice against the communally hateful and antinational terror groups but cases like Shopian are dragged for months for the simple purpose of arousing passions against the Indian state.

The time has come when the sham exercises to please separatist tendencies among any community, like instituting a Sachar committee and reservation on the religious basis should be shunned. India must stand on an Indianism that looks at all citizens equally irrespective of their colour or creed. Rukhsana has attained a status befitting the national heroes dwarfing the sultans of Delhi. Separatists whether in Srinagar or Silchar, grow on the incompetence of politicians and cowardice of their cohorts. If a just and fair policy is persued and antinationals are treated by the state power exactly the way Rukhsana treated, we would not be seeing the repeat of 26/11 or none would dare to insult the tricolour in the valley paving the way for the Kasmmiri Hindus to return to their sweet home.

Rama annihilated the unrepentant wrongdoers and brought cheers to his people. Hence there is Dussehra. What use celebrating it if India is not made invincible and strong enough to punish enemies?

To live with your head high, victory over evil is essential. It makes you moored in the faith that sustains earth. That an Indian satellite found water on the moon made every one of us feel great and Dussehra became more delightful. Success for a good cause. Achievement for noble purposes. But have you ever given a thought why should our people making giant leaps in any field, whether it is science and technology or a Kargil success, make us proud?

What’s the thread that binds us together in sukh, dukh, fall or ascent? The only thread is the feeling of belonging to one greater family of India, the civilizational fabric of Hindustan that was described vividly by Swami Vivekananda when he declared in Chicago on September 11, 1893. He spoke about the universal message of the Hindu civilization and became known as the cyclonic Hindu monk of India. He was accepted as a leader who changed the image of India abroad in a positive way. And mark his words, “I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth.”

The only place on this planet where thousands of years old civilizational values are still practised in their oldest form is India and undoubtedly that civilization is Hindu which has given this world the values of pluralism, respect for nature and an unbelievable space of freedom for thought. The civilization that is iconized in the virtues of Rama and Krishna, Dussehra and Diwali and Vedas and Upanishads and Bhagavadgita. The flow that makes us celebrate Puja, Navaratra and Bijoya. These are not just meaningless rituals of an illiterate society believing in multiplicity of gods and goddesses and worshipping divinity carved in stones. It’s the most fabulous and living civilization that world can see in the form of highest universal values expressed through the Vedic sages since millenniums. Those who do not read and have no knowledge must not sit on judgment on such a flow of greatest scholarship humanity has ever witnessed which kept the greatest minds of the west mesmerized in awe. Dussehra is not just a symbol of the victory of good over evil, it’s also a symbol of the invincible character and the prowess of the Hindu civilization that has survived the hardest assaults of the Arabs, Turks, Portuguese and British who attacked our nation and destroyed the centres of Hindu faith. But as the Constitution declares, Satyameva Jayate, the truth of this civilization’s inherent goodness, was never weakened or fatigued.

Ironically the very Hindu civilization is facing the greatest threat since its inception from within by those who are seeking power through avoiding the responsibility to protect Hindus and appeasing forces that represent the same assaulters of the yore who had destroyed Hampi and Thanjavur and Kashi. The very word Hinduness, the very appeal to assert the right of the Hindu civilization’s survival, raises eyebrows in the secular power sector and invites a state-supported condemnation. Does that attitude help a healthy social fabric? Is the distrust in the state apparatus to safeguard the all-encompassing Hindu civilizational power stations a positive feature for the nation that is still a Hindu majority and that has its principal identity as a land of the Hindu civilization? Why should anything that depicts a Hindu assertion be taken as anti-non-Hindus?

On the contrary the strengthening of the Hindu core values alone guarantees the survival of the various streams of faith and a weakened Hindu society would result in the de-pluralization of the Indian social fabric as we can see in our neighbourhood.

The state apparatus feels quite comfortable to talk to Hurriyat or the NSCN people who demand secession from our motherland and hence are anti-national. The Muslim League, which divided the nation, gets a berth in the cabinet but have you ever heard, the leaders of the assertive Hindu organizations being invited for a Presidential banquet or an at-home by the Prime Minister on the Diwali eve? Why this kind of an ideological apartheid against those who live and die for national integrity and protect the principal civilizational moors of the land? Why should it be necessary to think the way the state apparatus approves in a democracy and under a Constitution that upholds the values of pluralism? Then what will be the difference between a Stalinist attitude and a pluralistic democracy? Hindu assertions, without any acrimonious feelings for anyone, were never so much looked down and projected as unacceptable, even in the times of the Mughals, as they are being treated now under a hateful secular dispensation, that too in a nation that celebrates Dussehra as a national festival. Is that the right way to honour the spirit of Rama?

Hindus are refugees in their own nation, their number is dwindling and enormous amount of foreign money is allowed to reduce them through deceit and scandalous methods. The worshipped animal cow, which is essentially beneficial for agriculture is slaughtered and exported to Muslim countries and their highest revered temples either stand desecrated from the valley of Sage Kashyap to the land of Sarayu and Ganga or kept under government control disallowing them to run them as per scriptural instructions and with freedom. Why? Who gains by demoralizing the Hindus? What will happen if Hindus become a minority in India? If the only Muslim majority state in India can happily celebrate the dance of democracy by exiling all the Hindus from the valley and making it impossible for any justifiable distribution of the government grants and schemes in non-Muslim pockets of the state, then what will be the state of affairs when India becomes a non-Hindu-majority nation? Dussehra or Vijaya Dashami in times of looming threat from Pakistan and China, and internally from the Maoists, must mean more than burning the effigy of Ravana. The reason behind Dussehra is not a compromising attitude but a steel resolve to protect dharma and bring happiness to people. Can those who shiver in fear of the assaulters and live in their dread showing no intention defang them claim a ticket to Dussehra?

It’s important that such inconvenient questions be asked at Dussehra time and a grand festival of our civilization’s victorious character is not reduced merely into a fun and frolic carnival. Dussehra means victory for the Indian values and nobility of the human soul. That’s the success of dharma. The only point of universal convergence is the belief that goodness alone wins in the end, come what may. Rama, the victorious, shall always remain invincible because he epitomizes the maryada, the noble virtues and the righteousness. There is a Ravana, the evil, in every age and space on this planet and everywhere the faith that keeps society alive is the belief in the victory of goodness, in positive values. Hence Iqbal, the poet who would envision Pakistan at one stage, had called Rama the Imam-e- Hind, supreme icon of India and wrote "kuchh baat hai ki hasti mit-ti nahin hamaari (there is something extraordinary that we have survived the vicissitudes of history while all other civilizations vanished)." That extraordinary element is the belief in the victory of righteousness, the message that is ingrained in the logo of India’s Supreme Court (taken from the Mahabharata): Yato dharmah tato jayah (victory follows wherever there is dharma i.e. righteousness). That’s the character of the India’s soul. Hence the celebration of goodness winning over the evil has continued unabated since time immemorial.

This Dussehra, ask yourself, have you ever thought it prudent to teach your children about the grand heritage of your nation and ancestral knowledge that surpasses the lines of religion and ways of worship? Should it make us feel hesitant to say the truth that everyone in India, irrespective of the religious fault lines, belongs to the civilizational flow that’s epitomized in the legacy of Rama and Dussehra and a victory of good over evil? Shouldn't we be rising like Rama to deserve a Dussehra?